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Enlightenment Through Understanding

Market Update

October 11, 2014

With the exception of the recent rout in stocks, we’re still in the what is perhaps the slowest news cycle in almost a decade.

Three weeks later and still no new US Ebola patients, exactly as I thought it would be. That’s why I quit listening to right wing talk radio (and all media in general). A bunch of idiots trying to scare you so they make more money from advertising.

The left hopes the hacked Snapchat photos will discourage people from using the app, and hence cause the valuation of the start-up to plunge. No such luck, stupid libs. The people who use Snapchat don’t care that much if their photos are leaked; they are using it because it’s convenient, not so much because of the anonymity. Month ago, Snapchat also brushed off massive spamming attacks and leaked phone numbers. Once these social networking apps are viral, they are invincible to pretty much anything.

Is Snapchat another Myspace? The left said that about Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Dropbox, Tinder, Pinterest,..the list goes on and on. For every huge failure like Myspace, there have been dozens of huge successes and Snapchat is one of them. Snapchat will be worth $40 billion within a year or two, owing to huge growth and monetization potential. Even at $10 billion valuation everyone wants a piece of it, which will only drive the valuation higher and higher until it is eventually bought out or goes public. If it goes public at $40 billion, its valuation will double on the first day of trading making it an $80 billion dollar company. Not bad considering it was worth $80 million just a few years ago. It will be obscenely overvalued by any metric, but the price won’t fall much. At that point the S&P 500 will be at 2,500 or so. Facebook will be a $170 stock. Tesla will be $700. Uber will be worth $100 billion. I guarantee that by next year Tinder will be the next $10 billion dollar app. The list goes on. As Bay Area real estate keeps going up 10-30% a year, the left will be having fits about why this ‘bubble’ refuses to pop despite ever widening wealth inequality and low labor force participation. The post-2008 high IQ hyper-meritocracy is just getting started, and nothing short of divine intervention can stop it. Imagine a world where IQ is the most important predictor for success at life – oh wait, that world exists. You’re living in it right now. America is becoming richistan. Smartism everywhere. People are getting richer than ever.

A couple months ago, I tried a new investment strategy of creating a linear combination based portfolio of funds, resulting in a very high Sharpe ratio. So far, it’s worked out great. With the market down 5% off the highs, my portfolio is only off a tad: